So, even more over bloated, inefficient, security challenging, buggy current slurping rubbish except that its now embedded in a unit that isn't going to be updated because its locked into a poorly conceived quickly hacked to market 'embedded' system. Lovely....

Some of us have been in this game a long time. Decades. Some of us still love the subject and, unlike the more recent crop of 'developers' still care about efficiency and choosing the right tool for the job. Smaller, more efficient, low power consuming and easy to program 8/16 bit units are used all the time, and for good reason. An RTOS does add additional overheads and can consume precious clock cycles and, thus, current. Sometimes that trade off is worthwhile but, increasingly in the world of IoT, the relevance of these 'ancient' ideas are again being seen as critically relevant.

Given your comment, I can only assume you are still in school or have only just left it. That means that, no matter how good your academic record is, and no matter how clever you think you have been with any little amateur/school projects you might have completed , you are still wet behind the ears and, apparently, quite arrogant. Give it a couple of years before shooting your mouth off as, while not all, quite a few of your elders are your betters.

PS. Good move on posting as an AC. It might have saved you a few lost job interviews.

Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday February 23, 2016 @08:34AM
from the democracy-unleashed dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The German Interior Ministry has approved for investigative use a spying Trojan developed by the German Federal Criminal Police (a so-called "federal Trojan"). In fact, it could end up being used as early as this week. The police will have to get a court order to use the spyware, and prove that the suspect is involved in a crime threatening citizens' "life, limb or liberty". The malware has been developed in-house, and has been available since autumn 2015. It is supposed to be used only for so-called telecommunication surveillance at the source, i.e. to read emails, chats and wiretap phone calls made by the target via his or her computer or smartphone, and not to access files, steal passwords, or set up video or audio surveillance via the device.

Given just how noxious most rocket fuels are and, no doubt, the number of safety corner cut in the rush to beat the Soviets, I suspect that most of these facilities are far too contaminated to be economically rehabilitated for any other use in the foreseeable future.

An anonymous reader writes: 5 years after the Computrace Bios Rootkit that infected more than 60% of laptops was covered on Slashdot, new research indicates that the rootkit is now pre-installed and pre-enabled on even more laptops, hidden from bios menu, phones home 1 minute after first windows login and is hard coded to be ignored by major anti-virus software.

What was marketed as an "anti-theft feature" has now become a default backdoor, all major brand laptops are affected, nothing it safe anymore.

mrspoonsi writes: Thanks to a NASA physicist, the notion of warp speed might just travel out of sci-fi and into the real world.NASA's Harold White has been working since 2010 to develop a warp drive that will allow spacecraft to travel at speeds faster than light — 186,000 miles per second. White, who heads NASA's Advanced Propulsion Team, spoke about his conceptual starship at a conference last fall. But interest in his project reached a new level this week when he unveiled images of what the craft might look like. Created by artist Mark Rademaker, who based them on White's designs, the images show a technologically detailed spacecraft that wouldn't look out of place in a "Star Trek" movie. Rademaker says creating them took more than 1,600 hours. In his speech, White described space warps as faraway galaxies that can bend light around them. "There's no speed limit on the expansion and contraction of space, You can actually find a way to get around what I like to call the 11th commandment: Thou shall not exceed the speed of light."

One can tell you have probably never written anything longer than a snarky comment comprising of a handfull of sentences on/.

If by this you infer that Martin is a 'Grumpy old man' then you have to be, at least mentally and intellectually, a 'Hasty immature child'.

Wordperfect on DOS was close to perfect for writing. WordStar was not far behind and, in fact, provided the virtually standard program editor keystrokes on microcomputers for many years. You could write as the muse took you, never needing to faff around with a mouse, or wave your hands against an increasingly greasy touch screen. The modern GUI type interfaces may work well for 'bears of very little brain' but real writers much prefer to get ideas from their heads into the computer with as little interruption and distraction as possible.

Why not go research a little more, before being disrespectful to someone who has likely been far more productive and successful than yourself, and subsequently shooting your mouth off.

An anonymous reader writes: I am a middle school math teacher and I also run a programming club. I recent completed my M.Ed in math education and was inspired to try to do the new GT online MS in Computer Science in a couple of years. I have some background in programming: 2 intro to comp sci course, Java, C++, Python, they main scripting languages and a bunch of math background. I also read through this great article on getting these pre-requisites completed through coursera but unfortunately you need to wait for courses to enroll. I would like to just learn these on my own time, no credit necessary. Suggestions?

jfruh writes: Microsoft has been trying to wean users off of Windows XP for years, and on April 8 the company will drop support and stop security updates for the twelve-and-a-half-year-old OS. But Chinese users will still be able to get support, thanks to partnerships with several Chinese security vendors. Windows XP is still the OS of choice for a majority of Chinese Internet users, not least because it's been widely pirated over the years.

An anonymous reader writes: Secret messages have been hidden in Bitcoin transactions since the first one 2009. By using hexadecimal messages hackers have found a way to send files. Since the blockchain is shared by every computer in the transaction, it is possible to retrieve these messages. On his blog, Ken Shirriff shares messages he's found, from pictures and Python code to a 2.6 Mbs Wikileaks manual.

Telling people that their countries are not countries is insulting and just because you say it isn't doesn't make it right.

All of the bodies you cite are ephemeral modern organisational groups who will have a terminology to suit their uses and conveniences. Just because they choose to redefine something for their convenience doesn't make it a fact outside of their organisation.

Your choice of organisations to cite is also very amusing since most of them, except CERN, do have rather dubious reputations in many parts of the World. and I know a great many people, and likely many countries and nations, who would not accept their authority should they try to redefine ideas of nationality and country boundaries. And, frankly, were you really reaching to find something when you included CERN ?